Brunswick Aids Top Chinese Retailer in US IPO

Wed., May 21, 2014

JD.com, the Chinese retail website headed for a US initial public offering this week that could raise $1.7B, is working with Brunswick Group for communications support.

A $1.7B take when the company goes public on May 22 on the Nasdaq market would value JD.com at $24.6B, according to Bloomberg.

JD.com is an acronym for Jingdong Mall and was renamed from 360buy.com last year. The portal is China's top B2C retail hub with 47.4M active user accounts and 35K suppliers. It has seven centers around China to fulfill orders and 214 pickup stations in 495 Chinese cities.

The Wall Street Journal reported May 18 that the retailer is touting increased revenue and growth prospects for China's digital economy as it makes an investor pitch for the IPO. But the paper noted that investors will have little say in the company's operations as CEO/chairman Richard Liu controls nearly 84% of voting rights through special shares with 20 votes each.

Josh Gartner, an associate partner at Brunswick in Beijing, handles JD.com. Brunswick is one of at least three firms working the massive Chinese e-commerce IPO for Alibaba.com.